


More Than Me and You

by GhostFox



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Conspiracy Theories, Human Experimentation, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Shiro (Voltron), army veteran shiro, government coverups, keith loves mothman, physical therapist allura, shiro really needs a hug, space robots, the rest of the kids are in high school
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-09-20 10:10:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9486668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostFox/pseuds/GhostFox
Summary: “We know it sounds crazy. It is crazy, but you’re my only chance of finding my brother, Shiro,” she says, voice soft and warm. “Please help me.”I take a deep breath, having to steel myself to get the words out of my mouth. They feel like slugs crawling up my throat as I struggle to spit them out.“Matt is dead, Katie,” I tell her, voice steady and deep and a little too loud even though I feel like screaming. I can see something small break behind her pupils at the use of the name, and her hold on my hand slackens slightly. “No amount of...whatever this is, is going to change that.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Your love's a gathered storm I chased across the sky  
> A moment in your arms became the reason why  
> And you're still the only light that fills the emptiness  
> The only one I need until my dying breath  
> And I would give you everything just to  
> Feel your open arms  
> And I'm not sure I believe anything I feel
> 
> And now, now that you're near  
> There's nothing more without you  
> Without you here
> 
> \- The Goo Goo Dolls

They tell you the dreams will stop coming after a while. That you’ll stop waking in a cold sweat in the middle of the night trying to wipe your forehead with an arm that isn’t there anymore yet you can still feel the fingers curling into a fist on command. 

They force feed you prescriptions you keep telling them don’t work but instead of taking them away and letting your head clear they just up the dosage and smile as you start to feel less and less. 

‘Yes’, they tell you, ‘that means it’s working’.

It’s a lie though, all of it. I still see him every time I close my eyes, still smell warm blood and dirt in my nostrils and see it under my fingernails no matter how hard I scrub at them. And I still feel, through all of the numb buzzing and hazy fog in my brain I still  _ feel _ , no matter how many pills they shove down my throat.

Tonight is particularly bad, my chest heaving and throat burning as I wake suddenly, staring up towards the ceiling and willing my heart to slow its beating and my nausea to go away. 

My therapist told me to reflect on the dreams when they come, to pinpoint the things about them that are real or imagined and use it to calm myself down. It’s meant to separate reality as it happened from the reality my anxiety wants me to remember. That  _ should _ work, but it doesn’t, because both versions are the same.

It was him in the dream, Matt, the same as every night. Smiling at first, smiling at  _ me _ , eyes watery as they still adjusted to the new contacts the medical staff gave him. That was the last time I ever saw him smile; the expression quickly replaced with surprise and fear as something heavy smashed into the side of our carrier and flipped us. The gunfire started before we could pick ourselves back up from the heap of tangled limbs on the roof of the vehicle, drowning out the sound of Matt’s voice as he called out to me, and I watched in horror as a hand dragged him through one of the smashed windows, unable to move, unable to scream. 

That’s the version of him that lingers in my mind. Not the sweet selfless boy I met with a heart too big for his chest and a brain too big for his own good. Not the crooked grin and shy voice I fell in love with, just a look of terror as we both realized for the first time that I couldn’t save us. 

I don’t remember anything else before waking up in a hospital bed somewhere the doctors insisted was ‘back home’ and ‘safe’. They told me our patrol was attacked by an enemy squad; they said that I had lost my arm in the crash and was left behind to die. 

We were lucky, they’d said, lucky that another patrol wasn’t far behind us and came to the rescue. Lucky that I’d been far enough away from the enemy carrier not to sustain more damage in the following fight. Lucky that the enemy was stopped before our soldiers could be taken to their camp, since what would happen to them there would be so much worse than what actually happened. Lucky to be the only survivor of the Garrison army’s 43 rd infantry squad.

I was lucky to be alive, not  _ whole, _ but alive, and I should be thankful.

Maybe one day, I tell myself. Maybe I’ll be thankful one day. 

I roll over, my breathing finally evening out, and grab the water bottle on the night stand, taking a quick gulp before sitting up. There might be something to this dream reflection exercise after all, or maybe I’m just getting better at internalizing emotions. 

The sun is already up, leaking through the curtains and spilling in completely when I pull them back, immediately warming the space. It’s comforting for about a whole ten seconds before sweat beads on my upper lip and I feel immediately sticky. Summer has never been the fun sunshine time everyone claims it to be, it’s just heavy heat and broken dreams. 

I consider closing the curtains and crawling back into bed to sleep the day away but a flash of purple catches my eye. Stuck to the small mirror above my dresser are two small post-it notes, covered by a familiar swirling script. The first is filled with tiny doodled hearts and happy faces, the message outlined with squiggly lines in the center.

**Don’t forget to take your meds!**

**-Allura**

I sigh and shake my head before turning to the other note, visibly devoid of doodles.

**Also you’re out of milk. And peanut butter. And bread. You should definitely go shopping. Love you!**

That one makes me laugh, remembering the giant pile of peanut butter sandwiches Allura had made last night for us to eat cross legged on the floor while watching some cheesy horror flick she’d dug up on Netflix. Watching her scream at every predictable jump scare and laughing as she begged me to come with her to get the milk with thick peanut butter cemented words was so much more entertaining than the movie could ever be. 

I can’t remember a time when Allura wasn’t in my life. We’d grown up together, inseparable since the very first day we met on the playground, and even entered the military program together after graduating high school with heads full of fantasies of saving lives and ending the war that had been going on since before we were born. She was assigned to the medical officer program, and I became a soldier, but somehow we were never too far away from each other.

Matt was an easy replacement for her companionship after I was shipped out, but not in the same way. Allura was home. She was strength and stability, an anchor in a world that never stayed the same. But Matt, he was new. A home I could keep with me, one I could wrap my arms around and hold close to feel alive in the dark around us. Matt was a home I couldn’t hold on to, and Allura was one to which I could always return. 

Her’s was one of the first faces I saw after waking up back home, and probably the only reason I haven’t gone insane. She was assigned to my case, working as my physical therapist, and I was happy to have her. One friend in a world alone makes one hell of a difference. 

“Guess I’d better get going,” I mumble to myself, having been assigned my task for the day. Grocery shopping. I can do that. One stop, two hours max, no big deal.

I swallow the pills sitting in the container below the mirror and shower quickly, the cold water running down my face and pulling the fatigue from my eyelids away with it, and run a brush through my hair. It’s only grown gray since coming home, from stress I’d been told, but Allura had done her best to style it despite my indifference. 

“You can’t go around looking like an old man,” she had tsked, combing some soupy liquid along the sides of my head. “You’re not even in your thirties yet. They’re going to start offering you senior lunch specials at restaurants. People are going to think I’m your gold digger girlfriend or something.”

It didn’t seem like such a big deal to me but I had let her do what she wanted anyway. The style still looks odd to me, the short dark sides and tuft of white on top, but Allura had assured me this was ‘all the rage with the teens of the day’. I don’t know why I’d want to look like a teenager but when the other option is a deranged old guy with facial scars and a robot arm I don’t have much of a choice.

Instead I’m just a relatively young guy with facial scars and a robot arm. I guess that’s better. 

I pull on some jeans, buttoning them easily with one hand, and grab my prosthetic from the bedside table. Being a military veteran definitely has its perks, I think, as I slide the metal socket over what’s left of my right arm, the familiar cold biting into my skin. This arm is one of the most advanced ones offered, and I was given it just because I’m a wounded soldier. I’m not sure if that’s fair, but it makes life a lot easier so I don’t spend a lot of time complaining about it. 

With the arm attached I slip on a shirt and grab my keys, shoving them in my pocket with my wallet, and leave. 

I’ve learned to keep my head bowed as I walk down the street, tired of my stomach turning every time someone looks shocked as they go to smile politely at me and notice the angry scar across the bridge of my nose, or the way sympathy crosses their faces when they see metal emerging from my shirt sleeve instead of skin. It’s easier just to ignore them, especially without Allura by my side. 

The small grocery store is thankfully empty save for a few old women slowly making their way from aisle to aisle, so I take a deep breath and grab a plastic hand basket from the doorway. After grabbing the peanut butter I pick out a few boxes of cereal, the super sugary kind that Allura would yell at me for buying and then eat half of behind my back. 

On my way to the milk I notice an old woman stretching to reach a box of oatmeal from the top shelf. I almost walk past her, afraid of what kind of eyes she’ll fix me with, but I stop anyway. 

“Need some help, ma’am?” I ask, voice shaky. 

She doesn’t turn, just sighs in relief and nods. “Yes, please. Could you grab me the cinnamon brown sugar box?”

“Sure,” I reply, reaching up purposefully with my left arm and handing the box to her. “Here you go.”

“Thank you so much,” she says, putting it in her basket and looking up at me. Her eyebrows knit together at my scar, and I put my right arm behind my back on reflex. 

“Have a nice day,” I mumble, starting to turn but she grabs my hand before I can.

“Don’t hide your arm, sweetie. Don’t be ashamed of a part of yourself,” she smiles, and my stomach flips despite her kind words. “There’s bravery in your eyes, I can see it. How’d you lose it?”

No one has ever been blunt enough to ask me that outright, and it catches me off guard. She lets go of my hand and I pull my right arm from behind my back, flexing the metal fingers as I think about her question. 

“Military accident,” I tell her, dropping it back to my side. 

She nods and smiles again. “You should be proud of your sacrifice. Thank you for your service.”

“Th-thank you,” I nod, giving her a shaky smile. “I, uh, I’ll try.”

She pats my arm, my real one, and carries on her way. 

I feel sick. Proud of my sacrifice? What sacrifice? All I did was not die. I know it’s insensitive but I hate to hear those words, people thanking me for my service or applauding my bravery. They know nothing. They’re blindly encouraging a coward, but I don’t have the heart to correct them. 

I turn, heading in the opposite direction of the woman. I’m heading away from the milk but I don’t care, I just don’t want to run into anyone else. 

A wish, I quickly find, is futile as I round onto the junk food aisle to find someone shoving their arm deep into the shelf of oreos, fishing for something near the back. Familiar sandy brown hair falls over round glasses, and I drop my basket with a loud clatter, my mouth working faster than my brain can tell it to stop.

“Matt?”

His head whips around suddenly, darting from my shocked face to the mess of fallen groceries on the floor and back up, a similar look of surprise in the way his eyebrows shoot up. 

Except it’s not Matt. Their body is too scrawny and their legs too short. There’s too much suspicion in their hazel eyes, and I feel like the air is being sucked from my lungs.

“I…sorry,” I mutter, avoiding meeting the kid’s eyes and quickly bending down to shove the peanut butter and cereal back into my basket and leave. I’ll have to apologize to Allura later, this trip has been too much for me to handle.

“Hey! Wait!” The kid calls behind me, and I have to force myself not to wince at their voice. Not Matt’s voice. 

I ignore them and continue on, ducking down the canned food aisle when I hear the slap of sneakers on the linoleum behind me. My evasive maneuvers fail miserably, and the kid catches up quickly, jumping in front of me to keep me from moving forward.

“Sorry, I thought you were someone else,” I mumble, eyes cast down because I don’t think I can look at their face again. I try to move past but they throw their arms wide to stop me. 

“Why’d you call me Matt?” They ask, determination in their voice. 

“I didn’t,” I lie, looking up carefully but focusing somewhere just past their head.

“Yes you did. I heard you. You called me Matt and then tried to run away,” they persist, and I can’t help but think that Matt would probably like this kid. They have the same stubborn set to their jaw.

“It was a mistake; you looked familiar but I was wrong.” I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head, everything suddenly too loud and imposing in my numb brain. I want to situation to disappear, but when I open my eyes they’re still here,  _ I’m _ still here, and my brain is throbbing in my skull. 

“You knew him, didn’t you?” The kid asks, folding their arms when they’re certain I’m not going to try to run again. 

“What?”

“Matt Holt. Did you know him?”

My heart feels like it’s going to beat out of my chest, and it must show on my face because a smile spreads wide across the kid’s. “I-,”

“You did!” They grab the sides of my arms, both of them, and look up at me with such hope that I can’t help but relax a bit.

“How do you-,” I start, but a small hand covers my mouth, and the kid’s face turns suddenly serious. 

“It’s not safe to talk here. Come with me and I’ll tell you everything.” 

They turn quickly, pulling me behind them with my metal hand in theirs, my shopping basket clattering to the floor a second time, and I feel oddly like a child being abducted by a stranger.

Tell me everything? About Matt? What can there be to tell?

This is all so odd, so confusing, but I can’t bring myself to pull my hand away and stop following this kid. I don’t know when I started making such bad decisions. 

I blink as we step outside, the sun immediately bearing down on us, and immediately turn down the sidewalk in the opposite direction of home. People on the street shoot us suspicious looks as they move to the side, as if I’m the one leading this child who knows where. I can’t blame them, though; I’d probably think the same thing. 

“Hey, can you tell me where we’re going?” I call, trying to slow down but they just tug harder to get me to speed up. 

“Sorry, there weren’t any parking spots so we’re all the way down here,” they answer, finally stopping as we step up to a rusty Volkswagen van that looks like it just rolled out of a scrap yard. 

“We?”

I don’t get an answer. Instead the van door slides open and I’m shoved inside, protests dying on my lips as the kid climbs in beside me and I look around to find three other surprised faces meeting mine.

“Uhhh, Pidge?” The driver starts, a lanky boy in a blue tank top with his mouth hanging open. “That doesn’t look like the snacks we sent you in for.”

The boy next to me on the bench seat leans forward to address the small one, Pidge, on my other side, long dark hair falling in his eyes. “Why are we abducting this old man?”

He doesn’t seem upset about the action, just curious of the reasons. 

“We aren’t  _ abducting _ him, Keith, he came willingly,” they answer, rolling their eyes. “And he’s not old.”

I open my mouth to argue about the ‘willingly’ part, but the third boy, who looks like he’s watched Rambo a few too many times from the looks of his headband, interrupts me. “Pidge, I’m pretty sure this is illegal,” he says, words muffled as he presses his mouth to the headrest of the passenger seat.

“Oh my god, I didn’t abduct him! We just need a safe place to talk,” Pidge yells, throwing their hands up.

Matt. That’s right. I’m here because this kid wants to talk to me about Matt.

“I don’t know why we couldn’t talk in the store,” I say, all four heads whipping toward me as I finally speak. “And I don’t know how ‘willing’ being dragged down the sidewalk and shoved in a van is.”

“Oh no, grocery stores are the worst. Everything you’ve ever said in a grocery store has been recorded by the government and is probably sitting in a file with your name on it on the desk of some spy network as we speak,” the Rambo kid says, sitting up slightly and pulling his face away from the seat. 

“What are you-,”

“Hunk is right. No public place is ever safe,” Keith interrupts, nodding and folding his arms as if this is some kind of common knowledge. 

“What is this about, Pidge?” The driver asks, looking oddly serious. For some reason the expression seems foreign on his face. 

“It’s about Matt. This guy might have a lead,” they answer, reaching over me to click my seatbelt in place. “Take us home, Lance.”

Everyone follows suit, the sound of plastic and metal clicking filling the van as Lance starts the engine. The mention of Matt seems to kick them all into gear, a look of solemn determination painted on their faces.

“Wait a second!” I yell as the van starts to pull away from the curb, the boom of my voice seeming to suck the air from the space around us. “A lead? Government spies? Can someone  _ please _ tell me what’s going on here?”

No one moves and I drop my head into my hands, trying to slow my breathing and get a hold on the situation. Thoughts slip around like putty, not quite grasping firmly onto anything, and I feel like my head is buzzing. This has been much more excitement than I can handle at once, and I’ve been pulled in so many different directions, mentally and physically, that I feel like I’m going to snap in half. And thinking about Matt is not making any of it better. 

A small hand plants itself on my back, radiating heat, and Pidge leans close, voice calm and even as they whisper. “Hey, it’s okay. Don’t freak out. I just want to ask you a few questions about my brother, okay?”

I sit up suddenly, almost smacking my head on the roof of the van. “Your brother?”

Pidge smiles, a sad smile, as they fish in their pocket for a folded up photo and hand it to me. My fingers shake as I open it, and my chest turns cold as the smiling face of Matt and a young girl look up at me from its crinkled edges.

“Matt,” I breathe, swallowing hard over the lump in my throat. “Then you must be…”

No one else speaks as the van starts to move again, a feeling of solemnity heavy in the air. 

Pidge nods as she looks up at me again, smiling despite herself and moving her small hand to my forearm. 

“I’m Katie Holt,” she says, squeezing gently and nodding. “And you’re Shiro, aren’t you? Matt told me a lot about you.”

***

I learn several things on the short ride to wherever it is these kids decide to take me. 

One, despite her size, Pidge seems to be in charge, and no one calls her Katie. Not that she would mind, I think, seeing as everyone refers to her with different pronouns and she seems to have no reaction at all. I make a mental note not to get on her bad side. 

Second, Lance is a terrible driver. I can’t tell whether or not he hits every pothole he can on purpose or not though, since I can see a smirk on his face every time Keith kicks the back of his seat for it. I can practically smell the teen angst and romantic tension between them, and everyone else must too as I notice the way they roll their eyes at the bickering. 

And then there’s Keith, who’s a mystery in of himself with his red varsity jacket that makes me sweat just looking at the heavy leather sleeves and thick fleece body. I want to ask why he’s wearing it in this heat, but he just glares when I open my mouth so I decide against it. 

Lastly there’s Hunk who, despite his large and intimidating appearance, is a nervous talker. Apparently this situation makes him extremely nervous because by the time Lance parks the van I feel like I’ve just watched a documentary on the group’s daily lives. 

He tells me that the four of them are all in their high school’s journalism club, and that they run the ‘campus mysteries’ section where they investigate the mysterious goings on in their town. That explains a lot, I tell myself. I wonder how many blurry pictures of the Mothman they have on their phones. 

Words pour out of his mouth a mile a minute and no one tries to stop him except to chime in with corrections every once in awhile, like how Keith was not kicked off of the fencing team for breaking a rival team member’s nose but instead for not listening when the coach told him  _ not _ to break the rival team member’s nose. An important distinction. 

Lance shuts the engine off and everyone hops out, Pidge giving me another soft smile before beckoning me with a wave of her hand. I oblige, my shoes hitting grass and uneven dirt instead of the cement and asphalt I’m so used to. I haven’t been anywhere with grass in a long time. 

“I wonder if Mom started making lunch yet” Lance muses, stretching a long arm across his chest and slamming the driver door shut. “I’m starved, and  _ someone _ didn’t get the oreos.”

“I found something more important,” Pidge shrugs, grabbing my arm again and leading me behind the rest of the group as they make their way up the dirt path to a house a way’s away. 

“I hope so. There are few things in the world more important than oreos,” Hunk adds, lifting his nose into the air and breathing deeply. “Oooh something definitely smells good. I think we came just in time.”

“You’re like a bloodhound,” Keith mutters, adding to the conversation while still staying comfortably on the outside of it. “Or that rat from Ratatouille.”

“Thanks, man. He’s my hero.” There’s not a hint of sarcasm on his face. These kids are honestly the strangest people I’ve ever met. 

I look around the property as we walk, letting the chatter buzz as background noise as I take in my surroundings, wondering again how exactly my grocery store trip dissolved into this fluctuating chaos. The space is mostly hard packed dirt with divots like tears in the earth, little pockets of exposure to the layer underneath. There’s not much grass but where there is it’s overgrown, like shocks of emerald green hair poking out of that secret under layer of the ground. 

And then there’s the junk. Lines of rusted cars that look like they lost their spark before any of us were born, sheets of plywood and wooden pallets set up as makeshift ramps for the ATC sitting in an open shed where I see a bright red toolbox shoved into one corner, dirty toys left abandoned in the patches of tall grass, the gutted frame of a washing machine with flowers growing out where the glass door should be. All of this next to the simple off-white house with a porch swing and an apple tree out front and it makes for a pretty unique picture.

It’s messy, yes, but in a way that can’t help but make you smile. This isn’t my home, not a place I’ve ever even seen before now, but it feels like it could be. There’s an air of life breathed into every inch of this place, whispering welcome on the wind and inviting me in without question. My chest loosens, and I feel like I’m visiting an old friend. 

As we reach the back patio, Lance pulling the screen door open and kicking his shoes on the steps before walking in, I realize Hunk was right about the smell. A wave of onion and peppers and sizzling meat hits me and my stomach let’s out a ravenous growl as I realize I haven’t eaten today. 

Pidge hesitates on the top step, peering into the house and around the corner before stepping in with me still in tow. “Looks like Mom is in the kitchen,” she tells me, voice hushed as the screen slams behind up with a metal snap. “We’ll head to headquarters, you three go get food. And get a lot, Shiro sounds hungry.”

“No, I’m-,”

“Don’t sweat it, dude,” Lance smirks, folding his arms over his chest and pointing his chin towards what I guess must be the direction of the kitchen. “Mom always makes way too much food. And trust me, whatever it is you’re gonna want some.”

“Seriously. She’s the best cook in the world,” Hunk nods, noticeably salivating. “I’ve tried to move in so many times.”

“C’mon big buy. Let’s go check it out.” Lance pushes Hunk’s shoulder and they make their way down the hallway. 

“Alright,” Keith says, turning to Pidge and I with what seems to be a permanent look of business on his face. “We’ll get the food and meet up in five minutes. Over and out.”

“This isn’t a walkie talkie conversation. You don’t have to say over and out,” Pidge sighs, sighing deeply when Keith’s eyebrows knit together in confusion. 

“I thought you just say that to sound official.”

“Just  _ go already _ .”

“Alright, alright.” 

Keith sets off down the hall after Lance and Hunk and Pidge pulls me in the opposite direction, navigating the house easily.

“Shouldn’t we tell Lance’s mom that I’m here?” I ask, following behind since I’m basically used to being dragged around by Pidge now. “You know, just a heads up about the strange adult showing up in her house with her child and his friends, and all?”

“Mom won’t mind,” she replies,which I seriously doubt. I want to ask why Pidge also refers to the woman as ‘mom’ but I lose my train of thought as we come upon a door in the hallway.

Pidge opens it and silently pulls me down a staircase, shutting it back quickly and effectively cutting off the sounds of distant voices and background noise. I expect it to be dank and musty, but when she flips on the light switch the basement appears as just an ordinary room, complete with two sofas and a wide table in the center. 

It’s almost disappointingly mundane, until I see the corkboard.

“Um, what exactly is that?” I ask, eyebrows shooting up to meet my hairline as I walk towards the far wall. 

“That’s research,” she answers easily, not even looking up at my question as she drops to her knees next to the center table and starts clearing it of empty drink glasses and bags of chip crumbs. “Don’t touch anything.” 

“I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

The ‘research’ spans across the whole wall, well beyond the edges of the corkboard with various papers and fuzzy photographs pinned around it. I notice one of Matt near the center and I do my best to ignore it but the lump in my throat grows as I see one farther to the right of Matt and Pidge’s father, Samuel Holt. I never really extended the thought past my own grief, but Pidge and her mother lost both Matt and Samuel to the war. I feel sick for only thinking of myself for so long. 

Beyond those photos not a single other one on the wall is any sense of clear, black and white blurs of what I figure look like military vehicles but could also be a UFO if you tilt it the right way. There are pages of text that look like they were stolen from important filing cabinets and hastily scrawled notes beneath most of the documents, all riddled with thick felt tip marker messages and too many question marks to count. 

But none of that is what initially caught my attention. 

Almost every scrap of paper is connected to another with different colored strings of yarn, held in place by push pins or thick pieces of tape, even a pocket knife sticks out of the board on the far left side. It feels like something out of a movie, but if I’ve learned anything about these kids I met less than an hour ago it’s that they definitely didn’t make this as a joke. Whatever they’re ‘researching’ is something real and important to them. 

I turn back around and find the room empty, my mouth going dry and stomach dropping.

“Pidge?” My words are shaky.

“Over here,” her voice comes muffled from somewhere off in a corner, and I see orange sneakers and a green t-shirt poking out from behind a closet door. My heart slows a bit, realizing that she didn’t actually disappear, and I take a deep breathe. The Holt siblings are going to put me in an early grave, I swear it. One of them already halfway succeeded. 

“Here it is!” There’s a series of shuffling like cardboard sliding across the floor, and a small series of sounds of things falling over, but Pidge emerges from behind the door with a wide grin. She carries a shoebox in her hands and kicks her leg behind her to shut the closet back, cobwebs hanging from her hair. 

I’m about to ask what ‘it’ is, when the basement door slams open, making me jump. 

“Lunch is served, my dudes!” Lance yells, dropping down the steps three at a time carrying a plate piled high with food. Keith and Hunk follow closely behind with similar platters, and my mouth starts to water again as the smell from the kitchen returns. 

“Mom made empanadas,” Hunk explains as the three boys try to situate their plates on the table without anything falling. “There’s so many in there. Like,  _ so many _ .”

“Yeah, you know how she gets,” Lance shrugs, picking up an empanada and dropping onto on of the sofas. “She thinks every meal needs to be enough to feed an army.”

I eye the pile of food, remembering what an actual meal big enough to feed an army looks like, and figure the woman would fare pretty well with the troops. 

“Are you complaining?” Keith asks around a mouthful, tendrils of smoke escaping from between his lips as he chews the piping hot bread and meat. 

“Definitely not.”

Pidge shuffles me forward, standing on her tiptoes to push my shoulders and make me sit on the sofa before shoving an empanada in my hand and sitting next to me. 

“Eat,” she says, and I do.

I feel as if my entire body is warmed from the inside, the taste of onion and peppers singing against my tastebuds. Whatever Lance’s mother put into these it’s pure magic, or maybe the fact that I can’t remember the last time I ate home cooked food is swaying my opinion. 

“Ohm- _ god _ ,” I mumble, practically shoving the rest of the empanada in my mouth at once and reaching for another. 

“Ah, his first taste of Mom’s food,” Hunk says, grinning with cheeks stuffed like a squirrel. “I remember mine like it was yesterday. Fresh pozole. You can never go back, my friend. Her cooking is like an awakening.”

The others all nod in agreement, solemn as if this is some sacred fact known only to the worthy. 

“Oh, by the way, Shiro, Mom knows you’re here and she said you can stay for dinner,” Lance says, cartoonishly licking his fingers and smacking his lips. 

“She’s…okay with it?”

“Yeah! She’s totally used to new faces in the house, trust me.”

“But I’m not some school friend of yours,” I continue, realizing again that I have no idea why I’m here with this band of misfit teenagers. The entire day so far is kind of a blur. “I’m literally a stranger you found on the street.”

“Mom won’t mind,” Keith says plainly, echoing the words Pidge had said just a few minutes before.

“Wait a second,” I say, pressing my hands to my temple and squeezing my eyes shut, confusion catching up to me again and my breathing rattling a bit in my chest. “She’s all of your mom?”

“Nope, just mine,” Lance grins, sitting forward on the edge of the cushions. “But she acts like it. She’s been a foster parent since before I was born and she just can’t help but feed and take care of anyone who shows up on the doorstep. These guys call her mom because she insists on it.”

“Like the saying ‘it takes a village to raise a child’,” Hunk tells me, a warm look on his face at the thought of this woman I’m yet to meet. “Except she sees it more as ‘it takes a woman to raise a village’.”

“ _ Anyway _ ,” Pidge interrupts, wiping her fingers on her shorts and leaning forward to stack the empty plates together and slide them beneath the sofa. I doubt Mom would appreciate that. “Back to business.”

As if on command everyone switches gears, their goofy grins and playful eyes disappearing and turning into expressions of stern solemnity. The air around me seems to drop a few degrees, and I can't help but clench my jaw and follow suit. 

“These are all the letters Matt sent me while he was in training,” she continues, lifting the box she pulled from the closet onto the table with a face that betrays no emotion whatsoever. Mine, however, does enough of that for the both of us, my mouth dropping open slightly as I suck in a breath of surprise. “I don’t know if there’s anything helpful in here, but you’re welcome to read them.”

“Why are you showing these to me,” I ask, voice barely audible as I lift the lid from the box, familiar handwriting staring right back as me before I shove it closed again. Too much. This is too much for me. 

“Because we need to know what you remember. And if anything we’ve learned is correct, that’s not much.”

“What do you-,”

“Benzo Varinogen. You’re prescribed that right now, aren’t you?” Her eyes are like honey colored disks staring straight through me as if I’m made of glass. I’ve seen that look so many times before but not from her. I feel like vomiting, which would be such a waste of good food. 

“How did you-,”

“Holy shit, you actually knew him, didn’t you?” Lance asks, mouth hanging open like a bass. “You actually knew Matt.”

“No offense, Pidge, but we thought you’d gone off the rails for a second. We were gonna feed this guy and send him home after you asked your questions but,” Hunk pauses, eyeing me as if I came from outer space. “He’s the real deal.”

“Wait, if you’re the real Shiro, then what were you doing in the grocery store?” Keith asks, pushing some of his shaggy hair out of his eyes to see me better.  

“Buying groceries?”

“At the same time we  _ happened _ to go on a snack run and you just  _ happened _ to end up on the same aisle as Pidge?” He narrows his eyes and crosses his arms. “That’s suspicious.”

“What?”

“Keith, he’s not the suspicious one,” Lance sighs, shooting a disgusted look at his friend. “He’s the  _ victim _ here, remember?”

“We’re getting off track again!” Pidge yells, shutting off the bickering between the two just as it starts and turning back to me. “Shiro, Benzo Varinogen is a military grade memory suppressant, and, according to their medical database, you’re currently the only ex-soldier given the prescription.”

“I don’t...I don’t understand,” I mutter, my head pounding with too much information battling for ground and too many sounds mixing and morphing into monsters without form. “You aren’t making any sense. How could you know that?”

“The military is messing with your brain, dude, and have been for a long time,” Hunk says, tapping a finger against the side of his head to emphasize his words. 

“Look, you all seem like sweet kids, and it was nice meeting you, but I need to get home,” I tell them, standing up as a chorus of ‘no!’s’ erupt around me. 

Pidge leaps to her feet, taking my hand in her tiny ones, and I imagine what the warmth might feel like if it was flesh touching flesh. She doesn’t seem to mind the cold metal against her skin as she looks up at me like I’m her last hope in the world. She looks so much like Matt this way, and not just her features. She looks at me with the same hope Matt always did, the type of hope that made me feel like I meant something, because if I could put that look on one person’s face then my life wasn’t wasted. I haven’t thought of that look for longer than I can remember.

“We know it sounds crazy. It  _ is _ crazy, but you’re my only chance of finding my brother, Shiro,” she says, voice soft and warm. “Please help me.”

I take a deep breath, having to steel myself to get the words out of my mouth. They feel like slugs crawling up my throat as I struggle to spit them out. 

“Matt is dead, Katie,” I tell her, voice steady and deep and a little too loud even though I feel like screaming. I can see something small break behind her pupils at the use of the name, and her hold on my hand slackens slightly. “No amount of...whatever  _ this _ is, is going to change that.”

“Hey man, no need to yell,” Lance says, standing up and stepping between Pidge and I, his stance wary but firm. Hunk and Keith do the same, and I step back, feeling hot tears finally spill over my cheeks. 

It’s as if Pidge has three new big brothers, not that anyone could replace Matt. I’m glad to know she’s being taken care of without him. At least one of us is. 

“I’m sorry,” I breathe, “but I have to go.”

I’m halfway to the stairs when she speaks again. 

“You’re wrong, Shiro. You’re so  _ wrong _ , and I can prove it.”

I stop, debating whether or not to turn back around. I don’t want to share my demons with these kids, I don’t want to have to explain to Pidge the way Matt looked in our last moments together, how scared he was as he was taken from me. I don’t want her to know the end of her brother the same way I do, but I don’t know any other way to make her understand. 

“How would you do that?” I ask, barely choking out the words as I turn around, wanting nothing more than to be back home so I can take my meds and crawl back into bed where the demons only get me in the dark. 

Silently she strides over to the box of letters, moving a few around before pulling one out and handing it to me. 

“After the attack on your squad Matt’s letters stopped, and I believed those reports, I really did. My mom and I buried an empty casket next to the one for my father, but something always felt wrong,” she tells me, the three boys stepping closer to her as if they can protect her from these feelings she’s already felt. “I tried to convince myself he was dead, I tried to move on, and then this came in the mail six months ago.”

The writing is clearly Matt’s but I can’t afford myself the luxury of believing her words. 

“It says to find you, and I finally did.”

“Anyone could’ve sent that,” I mutter, looking at the envelope but not reaching for it. “It’s some sick joke someone is playing on you.”

“There’s two letters in here,” she continues, face like stone as she glares at me. Like this she looks nothing like her brother. He didn’t have a stern bone in his body. “One for me, and one addressed to you.”

The world spins beneath my feet and I struggle to swallow my fears before they can completely surface. 

“I haven’t read yours, but tell me, Shiro, if Matt is dead how would I have these?”

Pidge reaches into the envelope and pulls out a pair of metal dog tags, my own name glinting back at me.

“Matt was wearing those when...when it happened,” I mutter, taking the chain and rubbing my thumb over the scratched metal surface. “How did you get these.”

“He sent them with the letter. He said you wouldn’t believe me if I ever found you, and he was right.” She pauses, shooting me a smug smile. “So, do you believe me now?”

**Author's Note:**

> Any thoughts, questions, or suggestions can be directed to my [tumblr.](http://ghost--fox.tumblr.com/)


End file.
